Mitigation Measures
Once the delay has been identified and delay analysis carried out, measures shall be put in place to mitigate the impact of the delay. Based on the information and data available, several measures may be considered to mitigate this delay."
One of the foremost measures may be to address the issues identified in delay analysis and take necessary action thereby ensuring that the programme does not slip any further on account of these issues remaining unaddressed. Among others, these measures may include providing incentives to expedite the progress of works. Another measure may be to highlight to the contractor the liquidated damages and other contractual issues to make him aware of his contractual obligations
and thus expedite the progress.
The next step shall be to identify and take measures whereby the delays encountered may be recovered and project is brought back on track. These measures result in accelerating the originally foreseen rate of progress of works, and are called acceleration measures.
6.3.5.1 Acceleration measures
Acceleration measures (or schedule compression measures) is an important tool for meeting schedule deadlines and project completion targets. Also termed as time-cost trade-off process (see Annex A), acceleration measures are formulated on the simple concept of buying time in the most cost effective and optimum fashion. A number of algorithmic techniques based on heuristics like modified Siemens method (see Annex A) are available for determining the optimum acceleration measures for a construction project.
6.3.5.1.1 Additional resource mobilization
The most common and simple form of acceleration measures adopted on construction projects is the deployment of additional resources. Extra labour, additional incentives, additional or longer shifts, multiskilled multiskilled labour crews are common methodologies adopted by construction project managers. Deployment of additional equipment on equipment-intensive activities is another common acceleration measure. A rule-of-thumb to be adopted in such decisions is that
generally additional resource mobilization on critical activities is more effective than such deployments on non-critical activities. However, over-crowding and site-congestion which may result in lower production rate shall be avoided. It shall be necessary to match the supervisory and administrative resources.
6.3.5.1.2 Change of construction technology including materials Adoption of efficient construction methods and/or more equipment intensive construction technologies to accelerate the schedule are commonly used strategies on construction projects. This may be identified and adopted during the control phase of the project through various types of analysis including constructability analysis.
6.3.5.1.3 Change of design
Change in design to accelerate the schedule is another commonly used strategy on construction projects. This strategy may be undertaken during the control phase of the project through value engineering and constructability analysis.
6.3.5.2 All these measures may have contractual implications which shall be looked into.
